Janet Mock Is Here to Remind You Activism Doesn't Just Happen Every Four Years

How do you tell the stories of 11 trans people? If you're the activist and writer Janet Mock, you start by asking how do you tell the stories of 11 people? And then you make a movie.

Tonight, Mock will debutThe Trans List on HBO. The film, directed by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, is made up of five-minute vignettes, giving such diverse trans voices as Caitlyn Jenner, Laverne Cox, and porn star Buck Angel an equal platform to share their experiences.

"As a journalist, I came in thinking this is the story that I want to tell, but I still need to show up and be present," Mock said when we spoke over the phone last week. "I knew that there was a reason why we chose each person who was in the movie to be there." She invited Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, a Stonewall Riot veteran and "a rare elder in the trans community," to share memories of protest and triumph. She had Bamby Salcedo, a trans Latina who's been incarcerated, to speak to resilience. And she welcomed Nicole Maines, the first trans young person to win a court battle in a lawsuit over school bathrooms. "An icon," she cheered.

According to Mock, the movie is meant to show that "trans people are not a monolith." Like any set of people, each of the stories are unique, utterly singular. They do not all turn on medical transitions, necessarily. And they certainly do not obsess over the finer points of genitalia. Instead, they explore "what it means to seek fullness in your body, what it means to grapple with a society that is hostile to your existence, what it means to find your people."

After watching 'The Trans List' and just reading the news lately, it seems to me that we're in this unique moment for trans rights. On the one hand, we've made a lot of progress, changed many people's thinking about these issues. On the other, we still have so, so much work to do. How do you sit with that tension—celebrating what's happened and at the same time keeping the pressure on this fight?

I feel like that's like the tension that I've always lived. My forbearers enabled me to access so much as a younger person. When I was growing up, there was this terminology and there was consciousness, at least in the medical world, about trans-bodies. I grew up at a time in Hawaii where there were trans women around, so there were visible role models for me. At the same time, as a low-income trans girl of color, there were so many things that I didn't have access to. I didn't have access to a great education. I didn't have access to affordable healthcare.

For me, it colors all parts of the work that I do as an activist and a producer and a journalist. I think because I existed in that place, I'm very comfortable in it. It's always that give and take. Even the visibility of trans people in media comes with a sense of backlash—various patchwork state laws that come out or more harassment and violence, right? Progress zigzags. It's part of the way that movements just work. So, we try to ensure that we're centering on that tension. The sense of push and pull, that tension, is, I think, a part of the movement's work. This is our daily existence.

At one point in the film, Buck Angel talks about the importance of physical appearance. He speaks to this idea that self-care and vanity, even, can be a political act. He says, "Loving your own body can change your life." Did you feel that way when you were growing up? And now that you're older, is that something you think about more or less?

Anytime that we—and when I say "we," I mean feminine people, trans feminine folk, women—do anything that is centered on our own pleasure or desire, it's seen as frivolous. But learning how to love your own body and finding pleasure in something that has brought you pain [in the past] is so important. I think that it's probably a greater struggle for trans folk, because we struggle more with our bodies. And so for me, one of the goals of the project was to show not so much how we fit in our bodies, but how we share ourselves with the world, too.

Buck Angel, Major Griffin Gracy, and Shane Ortega in

Timothy Greenfield-Sanders/courtesy of HBO

Since the election, there's been an attack on our focus on "identity politics," even by people who consider themselves "progressive." Does that trend worry you?

I think millennials are the most woke generation because they understand that differences are just in the fabric of who we are. So, there can be a sense of like, "Diversity, multiculturalism, blah blah blah. We get it."

But for me it's like, as long as people are targeted because of their identities, our politics and our movement and our actions need to be just as targeted. We need to be exacting about who is most vulnerable, who is not being served. It's the poor, the incarcerated, the condemned, the feminine, the trans, the queer. It's the uneducated. That's what we need to center in our politics. And when we center our most vulnerable, we actually are a stronger society.

As long as people are targeted because of their identities, our politics and our movement and our actions need to be just as targeted.

They don't want it to be "identity politics" today and they want it to be something else tomorrow? That's fine. If they want to cloud up the truth in order to rally a new kind of base, then that's what they feel they need to do. But I know the movement that I'm part of. I've linked arms with [the people who are in it] and will continue to be exacting about what the truth is.

How do you plan to do that work, push for brave resistance over the next four years or eight or however long it takes?

As someone who wasn't heavily supported or resourced as a young person when I was going through the hardest times of my life, I'm used to operating outside of systems. The trans movement has always been that way. And so I think that we are not as shaken to our core around this election. For many of us, it was surprising but not shocking. I already knew the power of white patriarchy and white supremacy. So I need to keep doing what I'm doing now, which is to ensure that all of these grassroots queer and trans and feminist organizations in all of these different communities are supported, that they have the time that they need, that they have the talent and the money they need in order to fight back.

If we all banded together and built coalitions that were truly intersectional, we would be in power.

What we have to realize is that there's no one movement, but there are many movements in different locations in various states nationwide. The people in them need to be supported when they're dealing with the backlashes. What does that support look like for them?

We have to organize. We have to build up coalitions across all of these people who are considered "the other." If we all banded together and built coalitions that were truly intersectional, we would be in power. I believe in the power of the people. I still do. In the movie, Nicole Maines, the youngest person in our film, said that you have to advocate for yourself. You have to slay your own dragon. You can do it.

Nicole Maines, Janet Mock

courtesy HBO

That's the future, isn't it? That way of thinking?

Yes. That is what I'm excited about. Those young people. And no matter how discouraged I get from the people who are being appointed in this next administration, how discouraged I feel to know that I will no longer have folks who look like me and share in my vision, I am encouraged by what I think that this particular time period and this particular election season will inspire in the next generation and the current generation of freedom fighters.

Practically, what does that mean? How do we advance the cause?

Activism doesn't happen every four years. Our activism is every day. How are we making sure that our school boards are representative? Who's in the PTA? Do our young people feel safe walking around our neighborhood? ... We know that certain people are going to feel a lot more emboldened to not be "PC," to negate "identity politics," to continue to speak out in ways that they didn't before. We know that they can be overt in their racism and in their misogyny and their homophobia and in their Obama-phobia. They can do that now. So, we have to take care of our people. That's our work now. And it's going to be a lot harder than it would have been if Clinton was in the White House. But we have to do it anyway. We have to work for it! And it's not going to be easy. But guess what? It never was easy.

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